The diminishing value of racial profiling

The Scotsman newspaper reports that al-Qaeda is recruiting non-Asians to convert to Islam and carry out jihad in Britain: Al-Qaeda's white army of terror.

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

Lord Carlile, the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms.

Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.

It appears that British law enforcement understands how the jihadist threat is evolving and is trying to adapt to match. It remains to be seen whether the public understands the issue, and whether the political class has the guts to back up law enforcement. A silver lining in this story is that it aligns with the political correctness of the political class: now law enforcement is saying that the color of a man's skin isn't the best predictor of his propensity to jihadist murder.

Life imitates movies

First, we have "Weekend at Bernie's": Men Wheel Dead Roommate to Check Cashing Store, Arrested for Trying to Cash His Social Security Check

Second, "Idle Hands": Man Sees 'Mark of the Beast'; Cuts Off, Microwaves Hand

Lastly, "The Godfather": Man Gets Probation for Mailing Cow's Head to Wife's Lover

BONUS -- I can't remember the movie (if there was one), but there should be one: Polish Man Finds Wife Working in Brothel (come to think of it, it's a bit reminiscent of the Rupert Holmes song "Escape (The Pina Colada Song).")

Be prepared

Why can't we see more of this in the Muslim world (the Boy Scout, I mean, not the Islamofascist would-be assassin)? Boy scout saves leader of the Maldives.

The scout was identified as Mohamed Jaisham Ibrahim, who had lined up to welcome Gayoom, according to the president's Web site.

The boy was injured in the hand by the knife. "His wound was stitched but later he complained that he could not move some of his fingers, so he was flown by a sea plane to Male," Shareef said...

The attacker had wrapped the knife in a Maldives national flag as he stood among a crowd waiting for Gayoom, 70.

A police Web site identified the attacker as Mohamed Murshid, 20. No motive was given, and other details were not disclosed.

More evidence of UN uselessness

Proffered without comment:

UN peacekeepers ambushed in Darfur barely a week after launching mission

Bomb wounds 2 UN peacekeepers on patrol south of Beirut

Status quo won't change after Katyusha': 2 rockets hit North; Barak to "assess situation before responding;" UNIFIL to 'Post': No suspect ruled out.

CAIR acts as a foreign agent, so it should register as one

Think about this for a moment: Foreign Agents Registration Act

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act.

Is that clear in your mind? Good. Now keep it in mind as you read this press release from CAIR (with a tip-o'-th'-hat to Little Green Footballs):

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to drop a campaign advisor who offers rhetorical support to a group designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. government.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Daniel Pipes, who recently signed on to Giuliani's campaign as a foreign policy advisor, is a vocal supporter of the terror group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Earlier this year, Pipes even participated in a foreign rally for MEK leader Maryam Rajavi.

Shouldn't CAIR be required to register as a foreign agent under FARA?

Good thing Netflix doesn't operate in Gaza

Otherwise these people would be renting The Great Escape or Stalag 17 to learn how it's done: Hamas operative dies while digging tunnel.

A Hamas operative was killed Wednesday while digging a tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian News agencies reported.

The operative, 21-year-old Muhammad Salakh, was a member of a "tunnel unit" belonging to Hamas's Izzadin al-Kassam Brigades.

Hamas reported that Salakh was killed early Wednesday during a "special Jihad mission."

Three weeks ago, a Hamas operative was killed and two more were injured when a tunnel they were digging collapsed. Hamas's military wing also reported then that the operative was killed during a "Jihad mission."

Oh, say, can you see...?

Senator Barack Obama won't wear an American flag lapel pin, because it's not "true patriotism" to do so. Read his explanation, and then learn what it really means:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he doesn't wear the American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for "true patriotism" since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Asked about the decision Wednesday in an interview with KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Illinois senator said he stopped doing so shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens.

"The truth is that right after 9-11 I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9-11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.

"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."

If wearing a lapel pin is not an expression of true patriotism, why did Obama wear one "right after 9-11"? Because 9-11 was the defining moment for Progressives and Liberals: it was finally okay to love America, because America was a wounded victim.

Victimhood is the only basis for holding the moral high ground in the minds of American Leftists. Only the weak and oppressed deserve sympathy, admiration and solidarity. All others are oppressors, who deserve to be despised.

The classic example of this phenomenon is Israel. The Left felt sympathy and admiration for Israel when the perception was that Israel was comprised of victims of white European oppression. The Six-Day War changed things: ever since, Israel has been an outpost of white European oppression against the noble and long-suffering Arab and Muslim peoples of the Middle East. (Never mind that a large number of Israelis or their parents fled the nations neighboring Israel to escape Muslim oppression.)

So, too, has the United States fallen from grace in the eyes of Progressives and Liberals. They mourn the fact that President Bush had the audacity and short-sightedness to strike back at our enemies, thus "robbing America of its moral authority" and "squandering the goodwill of the world." Their oft-repeated lament, that "after 9-11, the whole world was on our side," tells you what they truly believe: they are ashamed of an America that isn't weak, wounded and helpless. They also completely misunderstand the nature of America's enemies, for rather than feeling remorse or shame at the 9-11 attacks, our enemies felt emboldened, invigorated and thirsty for more American blood.

This is why Obama says, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great" -- not, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe makes this country great." For Obama and the other Progressives and Liberals, America ascendant and victorious in military battle is the opposite of a great country, and only an America that bows and scrapes to its enemies -- and subordinates its own national interests to the "greater good" defined by those enemies -- can be truly great. They love this country so much that they want to see it destroyed in order to become the ultimate morally admirable victim.

Palestinian civil war in the refugee camps of Lebanon

The Hamas-Fatah internicine war that divided the Palestinian government into a Gaza Hamas administration and a West Bank Fatah one is now playing itself out in the Palestinian refugee camps in other countries. Here is an example from Lebanon.

The clash erupted in the Miyeh Miyeh camp near the main southern coastal city of Sidon at about 1 am (2200 GMT Wednesday) and raged for about 90 minutes before calm was restored, a Palestinian source said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah faction has been in open conflict with Hamas since the Islamist movement's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June.

The fighting broke out over a dispute between a Hamas militant and a Fatah rival over electricity supplies to a sector of the camp, the source said.

"It was an isolated incident that was rapidly brought under control," said Munir Maqdah, the Palestine Liberation Organisation's official in southern Lebanon.

"We don't want the events of Gaza to happen in the Lebanese camps."

Abu Mahmud, a Hamas official in Miyeh Miyeh, accused Fatah of "provocation" saying its supporters had ripped up posters of the late Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who were both assassinated by Israel.

The two injured men, who suffered bullet wounds, were identifed as a Fatah militant and a Lebanese who lives next to the camp.

After the events at the Nahr al-Bared camp, the Lebanese are in no mood to continue hosting Palestinian refugees if the camps are going to break out into open civil war.

Suicidal tendencies

A strange suicidal madness is spreading: FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses War.

Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday.

The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer. Seven percent of independents said the world would be better off if the U.S. lost the war.

Click here for results of the poll.(pdf)

Overall, 11 percent of Americans think the world would be "better off" if the U.S. lost the war, and 73 percent disagree.

Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26. The poll has a 3-point margin of error.

My question for those affirmative respondents is, better off how, exactly?

Congressional water torture

Not that there is any credible evidence that the Bush Administration has authorized torture, but key Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Bush Administration turn over "alleged" directives authorizing torture.

House Democrats demanded Thursday that the Justice Department turn over two secret memos that reportedly authorize painful interrogation tactics against terror suspects — despite the Bush administration's insistence that it has not violated U.S. anti-torture laws.

Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department said a memo written in February 2005 on this subject did not change an administration policy issued in 2004 that publicly renounced torture as "abhorrent."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., promised a congressional inquiry into the two Justice Department legal opinions that reportedly "explicitly authorized the use of painful and psychological tactics on terrorism suspects."

"Both the alleged content of these opinions and the fact that they have been kept secret from Congress are extremely troubling, especially in light of the department's 2004 withdrawal of an earlier opinion similarly approving such methods," Conyers, D-Mich., and fellow House Judiciary member Nadler wrote in a letter Thursday to Acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler.

It's wonderful to see that Democrats have their priorities straight. No matter what the threat to the lives and safety of Americans, the real thing they keep first and foremost in their minds is not being unduly mean to terror suspects.

"The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security," Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in a statement. "We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer — it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach."

Here's the fundamental question for Obama, Nadler and Conyers: how many Americans are you willing to let die to keep to your anti-torture principles? If "torture is not part of the answer," excluded from "whatever it takes" to defend America from terror attacks, then you must state explicitly that America must never torture any terror suspect, no matter how many American lives are lost by foregoing the information that suspect has. Tell us that you truly believe that the human rights of the terror suspect to be exempted from torture outweigh the rights of American civilians to be exempted from being murdered.

UK letter bomber "a confused young man" angry at Government security measures

A British letter bomber, responsible for injuring eight people, was "a confused young man" angry over the development of the British surveillance state.

Cooper had for years harboured a seething resentment over what he perceived as the growing threat to Britain's civil liberties.

The increase in surveillance cameras, anti-terrorist measures and "overbearing" Government control were a constant source of frustration. He had campaigned peacefully against identity cards and the treatment of anti-nuclear protesters, but it was getting him nowhere.

The catalyst for his change in tactics came in 2003 following the decision to hold on record the DNA of his father, Clive, despite his being cleared of an allegation of assault.

Cooper, a confused young man who had difficulty forming social relationships, suddenly had a cause to channel his anger.

The hate rhetoric of the Left, the seething over its impotence in changing security and defense policy, is more than the expression of inchoate rage. It's the seedbed for this type of domestic terrorism. Watch for the "Kos Kidz," the readers of The Daily Kos blogsite, to start falling into this practice in the not-distant future.

Pogroms in Gaza

Palestinian Christians in Gaza are experiencing pogroms carried out by their Muslim Palestinian neighbors. An 80-year-old woman was a recent victim:

Tarazi said a masked man dressed in black clothes had knocked on her door late at night and demanded all her money.

"He was carrying a club and a sharp tool," she said. "As soon as I opened the door, he pushed me inside and shouted: 'Where is the money, you infidel?' I shouted back: 'I'm not an infidel - I'm a proud Palestinian Arab.'"

Tarazi said the assailant had beaten her on her hands with the club, demanding that she hand over all her money and jewelry.

"I was so terrified that I gave him two golden bracelets, a cellphone and a few hundred shekels," she said. "But the man said this was not enough and hit me hard on the head with a tool he was carrying until I started bleeding." He then locked her in her bedroom and started searching the house for money and valuable items, she added.

This wasn't an isolated incident of petty crime. Churches and Christian schools have been attacked and desecrated:

The assault on the elderly Christian woman is the latest in a series of attacks against Christians over the past few months. Since the Hamas takeover, a Christian school and a church have been targeted by Muslims.

Father Manuel Musalam, leader of the small Latin community in the Gaza Strip, said masked gunmen torched and looted the Rosary Sisters School and the Latin Church.

"The masked gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to storm the main entrances of the school and church," he said. "Then they destroyed almost everything inside, including the cross, the holy book, computers and other equipment."

Musalam expressed outrage over the burning of copies of the Bible, adding that the gunmen destroyed all the crosses inside the church and school.

"Those who did these awful things have no respect for Christian-Muslim relations," he said.

So much for Islam's respect for other Peoples of the Book....

Buddhist monks leading Burma protests

Crowds estimated at 50,000 to 100,000, led by Buddhist monks, are marching through Burma to demand an end to repression and a return to the path to democracy.

Some monks' representatives had called for the entire country to join them in their campaign to overthrow the government, which began eight days ago.

Monday saw marches in at least 25 towns and cities, including Mandalay, Sittwe and Pakokku.

Turnout estimates in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city, range from 50,000 to 100,000.

In doing so, they're putting their lives on the line.

Burma's ruling military junta has warned it is ready to "take action" against Buddhist monks leading mounting protests, state media have reported. Brig Gen Thura Myint Maung, minister for religion, warned them not to break Buddhist "rules and regulations" as Rangoon saw the largest march yet.

He blamed the protests on "destructive elements" opposed to peace in Burma.

The military government has so far showed restraint against the protests.

Monks are highly revered in Burma and correspondents say any move by the junta to crush their demonstrations would spark an outcry.

But there are fears of a repeat of 1988, correspondents say, when the last democracy uprising was crushed by the military and some 3,000 people were killed.

The regime in Burma has shown itself to be highly resilient and resistant to outside influence. One hopes that this uprising will finally shame the junta into reform.

The mace of social justice in Saudi Arabia

Brave women: Saudi woman sprays religious police agents with tearing irritant.

Two Saudi women called agents of the feared religious police terrorists and one sprayed the men with a tearing irritant after the agents stopped them because they did not conform to the kingdom's strict dress code, the religious police said Monday in a statement.

One of the women filmed the incident, which took place in the Eastern Province on Thursday, the statement quoted Muhammad bin Marshoud al-Marshoud, head of the Eastern Province branch of the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice as saying.

The commission employs the police unit that enforces the kingdom's strict Islamic lifestyle. The police patrol public places to ensure women are covered and not wearing make up, the sexes don't mingle, shops close five times a day for Muslim prayers and men go to the mosque and worship.

Wonder what their life expectancy has been adjusted down to.

When is an act of war an act of war?

So the US military catches a member of the Iranian military -- the "elite" Revolutionary Guards Quds Force -- in Iraq, in the process of smuggling sophisticated explosively-formed projectiles into the country to murder Americans and Iraqis.

An Iranian officer accused of smuggling powerful roadside bombs into Iraq for the elite Quds force was arrested Thursday, the military said.

The suspect - a member of the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards - was detained in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, the military said.

He was allegedly involved in transporting roadside bombs, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, into Iraq, according to a statement. It said intelligence reports also indicated he was involved in the infiltration and training of foreign fighters in Iraq.

At what point do we call this activity what it is -- an act of war?

Same question for the Lebanese, who saw another anti-Syrian lawmaker assassinated by car bomb.

Beirut - The Assassination of Phalange Party MP Antoine Ghanem on Wednesday was widely condemned by the various factions and blamed by the March 14 majority alliance on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

MP Saad Hariri, leader of the parliament majority , blamed the killing on the "cowardly" Assad regime which "retaliated by killing Lebanese after Israeli jet fighters raided Syria."

"I haven't in my life known a more cowardly regime than that of Bashar Assad," a sad-looking Hariri told reporters.

He said the "enemies of Lebanon killed Antoine Ghanem (picture) today because they want to prevent the presidential elections … they want to kill Lebanon."



"We will not permit the criminals to kill Lebanon.. The presidential elections will be held … the presidency belongs to the Lebanese people," Hariri vowed.

He said the international tribunal that would try suspects in the 2005 slaying of his father former PM Rafik Hariri and related crimes, "would also try the cowardly killers and those who are blocking the presidential elections."

Democratic Gathering leader Walid Jumblatt also charged the Assad regime of architecting the Ghanem killing by a booby-trapped car explosion to "strike at the parliamentary majority and the Lebanese People which is struggling for its independence, sovereignty and freedom."

The situation in Iraq and Lebanon would be much calmer if the situation in Iran and Syria were much hotter.